Tag: infant death

My life has become a void. An endless succession of hollow days, going through the motions, accomplishing nothing for months on end. I stare at an rectangular electronic device from the moment I wake to the moment I close my eyes, lulling my mind into a stupor to mask the emptiness and pain. Hours, days, months…it’s all the same. I think the seasons have changed. I feel like a building that’s been condemned, dark, empty of life, pathetic. The only true proof I have of the passing of time is my ever-growing belly. Pregnancy is supposed to be a time of happiness and excitement, two people feeling the movements of their unseen child, discussing who he might become with eyes full of joy. Sometimes I’m successful at being excited and happy, but he seems disinterested. I long to hold my child in my arms again more than anything in the world, even though this child will never replace the one I’ve lost. I’m trying my best to prepare for his arrival, in both the traditional way and mentally. Will I love him like I did Daxon? Will he share my eyes, or will they be blue like Dax’s, or maybe both blue and green like his father’s? Will he sometimes make the same expressions as Dax, sending a thousand needles through my heart? Will he live? This…this is what plagues my mind. I am where babies go to die, it seems. I want him so badly. I need him to survive. But I feel like a deep, dark part of me knows that he won’t, and then I won’t either. I can’t have three babies in Heaven before me. I can’t. When will this day ever end?

My heart feels like it wants to gnaw its way out my chest, like it’s infected with some cannibalistic virus. It won’t stop pounding inside my ribcage. The sensation is maddening. Why won’t it just stop? The hot, torrent liquid that is anxiety is starting to rise above my chest now; soon I’ll be drowning in it. I can’t think of my son without feeling the gaping hole in my chest. I swear, it’s almost visible. I feel like I could reach both my arms inside it and still have room leftover. I just want this pain to end and to leave me with my baby in Heaven. How am I supposed to live like this? How am I supposed to raise my new baby boy like this? How am I supposed to give birth and look at him without wishing he were Daxon?

I was not supposed to feel this way anymore. My greatest anxieties were supposed to be long past, allowing me to live a happy, fulfilling life, overflowing with love with my son. Everything had changed and everything was perfect. But for far too short a time. I hadn’t felt this familiar grip in so long. Years. Now, it’s like the demon on my back has returned, grinning larger than ever, its stench wrenching into my body and blackening my heart. The only reason I want to keep breathing at all is for the tiny baby growing in my belly. Otherwise, I would likely let the madness take me. Just let go and not give a duck about anything anymore. Dax would be so upset to see me like that. I honestly suspect that that is why I was already unknowingly pregnant with his baby brother when he died. God knows I’ve wanted to kill myself for many, many years. It’s been my faith and fear of the unknown that’s kept me going. Well, that and a shitload of drugs and alcohol before I found out Dax was growing inside my body. I hated myself for so long, until I became a mom. I’d found my purpose, the one thing I was kind of good at, the one person I love with my entire being and would do anything for. For once, I looked forward to the rest of my life, watching him grow, teaching him so many new things, being there for him when he hurt, when he fell in love, when he just wanted to cuddle and watch movies all Saturday morning. Now, there is the biggest black cloud over my life that I know will never go away. I’ll have my rainbow, which is a miracle because there is no sunlight left. But I’ve made it one more day. One more day closer to my sweet boy.

You know that feeling when you’re kind of lethargic, but you want to do something but you just can’t figure out what you want to do? You look around, run through your options in your head…video games? Nah. Read a book? Maybe, but not really. Watch a movie? Ugh, no. I get that feeling a lot, especially since I haven’t been working since before my son was born Christmas of 2015. I had the year off to raise him until he was old enough to go into daycare, but then after he passed and I found out I was pregnant and was diagnosed with PTSD, they allowed me to just stay off. I’m very lucky my boyfriend is so supportive. I help out as much as I am able. So all this time off, being alone with my thoughts now, trying to find distractions to fill my days, I get that feeling a lot. Slowly, it dawns on me what it is I really want to do. I want to hold my little boy. That is the only thing in the universe that could satisfy my needs in that moment. But I can’t. In a few months, I’ll be able to hold a new little one, but it won’t be my Dax. I can’t hold him until the day I die, and that day is so painstakingly far from sight. I used to feel like my life was speeding ahead of me and I could never catch up. Now I feel like my death is running from me, playing a cruel game of tag and I’ll never catch it. Not until I’ve forgotten what his little fingers felt like or the way his hair smelled after a bath, or how soft and fine it felt when I ran my fingers through it. I remember the deep divet above his butt crack, the tiny little bump on the daith part of his right ear and the indent on the lobe of his left one that looked like his finger nail had been dug into it in utero when the ear was forming and left an imprint. I remember how every single little part of his body felt in my hands and the weight of his body lying on my chest as he slept. My arms fit around him just perfectly. Nothing had every felt so…belonging, I guess. He belongs with me. He belongs in my arms where he fit just perfectly.

Now, all I have to fill those moments is tears and gasping breaths, begging God to tell me why He took my baby from me, begging Him to turn back time to that last day so I could stay with him all night long and try to save him.